Scientists have found what they say is a new family of legless amphibians in Northeast India - animals they say may have diverged from similar vertebrates in Africa when the land masses separated tens of millions of years ago.

The find, the scientists say, might foreshadow other discoveries in Northeast India and might help show the area played a more important evolutionary role than previously thought.

The creatures are part of an order of limbless, soil-dwelling amphibians called caecilians - not to be confused with snakes, which are reptiles. Caecilians were previously known to consist of nine families in Asia, Africa and South America.

But different bone structures in the head distinguish this apparent 10th family, and DNA testing links the creatures not to other caecilians in India, but to caecilians that are exclusively from Africa, the scientists report this week in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London.

The new family has been dubbed Chikilidae by the scientists from India, Belgium and the United Kingdom, including lead author Rachunliu Kamei, who was pursuing her doctorate at University of Delhi. The team found them during what it believes is the first caecilian survey in Northeast India, digging at 238 sites from 2006 to 2010.

â€śItâ€™s an amazing thing to find a new family, especially vertebrates, in this day in age,â€ť Global Wildlife Conservation president Don Church, who was not part of the team but knows Kamei and the teamâ€™s other scientists, told CNN on Thursday. â€śBirds, reptiles and amphibians really were thought to have been well worked out at the family level.â€ť

The burrowing amphibians â€śexhibit an intriguing and highly specialized reproductive behavior,â€ť the teamâ€™s leader, University of Delhi professor Sathyabhama Das Biju, told The Times of India.

â€śThe mother builds underground nests for her eggs, guards her egg-clutch by coiling around them until the embryos hatch after 2-3 months,â€ť he told The Times of India. â€śThe eggs undergo direct development - they feed on the yolk reserves and come out as miniature adults.â€ť

Residents of the area had mistaken the amphibians for snakes, the Indian news outlet reported.

Chikilidaeâ€™s link to the African caecilians, and its divergence and survival in Northeast India during the subcontinentâ€™s isolation before it joined with Asia, suggests the area had long-term ecological stability. That suggests it might have more life endemic to that region than is currently recognized, the scientists say in the report.

Scientists traditionally have viewed Northeast India as just a passageway where flora and fauna moved between biodiversity hotspots in Southeast Asia and a different part of India, Church said.

â€śNow, with a study like this, we realize that this part of the world is important not just for the movement of plants and animals between the Indian subcontinent and southeast Asia, but an important area for evolution in its own right,â€ť Church said.

â€śThis discovery begs the question: What else has happened up there in terms of evolution of life in Northeast India?â€ť he added.

Geographically distinct Northeast India has not been studied well, and many other undocumented creatures and flora may await there, according to the team. The region is almost cut off from the rest of India, nearly surrounded by Bangladesh, Myanmar and China.

Time, they say, is of the essence.

â€śFurther explorations and conservation actions are urgent because the regionâ€™s biodiversity is generally under high threat from the growing resident human population and rapid deforestation,â€ť the scientists say in their report.

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